


Inter-realm road trip (aka Shisui don't touch that)

by godaime_obito



Series: magic week [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Magic, M/M, Naruto Magic Week 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2020-06-02 12:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19441159
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godaime_obito/pseuds/godaime_obito
Summary: For the prompt forgotten magicShisui should know better than to poke around in old forgotten tomes and spell arrays- and yet he really doesn’t.





	1. in his defense he was left unsupervised

Shisui wasn’t close to his mother. He wouldn’t say that it was on purpose, just that they both had a tendency to get obsessed with their work or studies and forget about staying in touch. Just over a year ago she disappeared during a case investigating a disturbance in the natural energy outside of the city. He’s been putting off going through her things in the hope that she’d turn up, but it’s not looking likely at this point. As much as he hates to do this, he can’t really leave the job for someone else, because who knows what sort of traps and incantations a high-mage like his mother left on her things.

The old family home isn’t much different from his childhood and appears surprisingly benign until he reaches the upper level. The third story is full of strange spell-traps and rooms of old artifacts and tomes. Somehow despite the seeming age of everything, one room’s contents seem even older. Stacks of dusty tomes with yellowing pages sticking out haphazardly, an antique scrying ball, and a smudged array of magic-channeling lines. Laid carefully in the center of the lines is a gem, it pulses with a faint light, and all the shades of blue that color it swirl slowly beneath the surface.

In the name of transparency, Shisui will admit he’s not known for careful consideration once he has an idea in his head. This room wasn’t heavily trapped, and his mother left the array intact, unsupervised even, so it’s probably not _that_ dangerous. It seems to him in that moment that pushing some of his magic into it and seeing what it does is the most efficient way to deal with it.

The glow brightens as magic feeds into the gem, and the air chills slightly, less of a winter chill and more like an ocean breeze. The space above the blue crystal warps and shifts, folding in on itself as a new shape takes form above it. The shimmering distortion slowly takes on a more humanoid shape as it solidifies and steps down in front of the gem.

“Wow,” Shisui breathes. That is not a human. A man stands, starring directly at him, except he’s not quite… a man. There’s something just too symmetrical about his face, something unusually still in his stance, and his silvery white hair and deep red eyes are no shade he’s seen on any human before.

“Nice to meet you,” he offers when the… entity makes no move to speak. “I’m Uchiha Shisui! Not to be rude, but who and what are you?” Oh gods, he’s going to get himself smited, this is why he’s never assigned cases involving powerful spirits by the guild.

The not-man steps closer to him and he flinches back slightly, but to his delight, rather than smiting him he just laughs at Shisui. Or well, chuckles slightly? He attempts a smile in return. It’s only a little shaky.

“You are not quite Uchiha Kagami, although you seem to have his introduction style,” he finally offers, “I am Tobirama. I guard the Great Sea; you could say I’m a water spirit.”

“Kagami was my grandfather. You knew him?” he asks.

“Very well. This is the array he uses to summon me. Or more accurately, to request I come by when I can,” he clarifies, “I was surprised when I felt the call. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen him and mortal lives are short.”

Somehow, he feels like Tobirama isn’t taking this as well he sounds. Shisui should know better than to poke around in old forgotten tomes and spell arrays- and yet he _really_ doesn’t.


	2. A perfectly normal outing

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this isnt really edited and it did turn out to somehow be both longer and shorter than I thought it would be, but im calling it done.

Shisui does his best to concisely explain that grandpa Kagami went missing shortly before his child, Shisui’s mother, was born and long before he himself was born. Tobirama seems to be unmoved right up until he comes to some epiphany or decision, and suddenly storms out of the room. He trails reluctantly after him. He can hardly let some unknown spirit run all over the place unsupervised.

“Where are you going? What are you doing?” he asks. He’d panic, but with the week he’s been having he’s too tired for that.

“You mean what are we doing,” Tobirama corrects.

“I don’t remember agreeing to do anything.”

“Where is your mother now?”

“Funny story that,” he replies, “She disappeared in the same area grandpa Kagami did, looking into a natural energy disturbance.”

“I see,” he says, pausing for a moment, “I’ll have to trouble you to lead the way there.”

Shisui thinks he’s finally getting where this is going. “You think as a water spirit that you’re in touch enough with nature energy to solve the mystery?”

“I don’t think, I know,” Tobirama huffs, “At this point it’s just a matter of confirming my theory. Start leading the way and I’ll tell you as we go.”

“Fine,” Shisui relents, and gestures toward the far Eastern edge of town, “this way.”

Tobirama follows him, footsteps almost completely silent. “Kagami first summoned me when he was twenty, during his early experiments with alchemic arrays and their connections to other realms,” he begins. Despite his dry tone, he somehow also seems fond.

“He continued summoning me regularly for a few years after that. We were… close,” he continues, “he’d only recently agreed to his clan elders’ _request_ to sire an heir for his line of the clan when he stopped summoning me.”

Tobirama falls silent as Shisui leads him into a dense wood, full of maples and oaks with leaves starting to turn colors for autumn. With an almost forlorn inhale, he adds, “I thought perhaps having a child with someone from his clan had changed his mind about our arrangement.”

“But you were still waiting on the other end of the summoning,” Shisui observes. He doesn’t know much about summoning, but he knows a spirit as powerful as Tobirama only comes if they want to.

“I suppose I was,” he admits softly.

The area his mother and grandfather both disappeared in isn’t that far really, and the come upon the clearing as they finish talking. Focusing on sensing out with his magic, Shisui can tell they’re drawing closer to something that’s… off. It’s not an abundance of natural magic or a lack of it, but a feeling as if the magic itself is just sideways from what it normally is. Like expecting a dog and getting a fox.

Tobirama steps confidently toward the center of the off-magic, and reaches forward, pressing into it with his own energy.

“A tear in space-time. It’s formed a pocket realm,” he declares, strangely blasé.

“A what?!” Shisui asks, “Do you come across those just laying around often?!?”

“No,” he replies, “they’re not naturally occurring, and few know how to open them. I was assisting Kagami in his research into them not long before he disappeared. Whoever made this one didn’t know how to close it properly. It must have widened over time and pulled in your mother while she was investigating it.”

“Right,” Shisui groans, “You think the original person who was pulled in was my grandfather? Who would purposefully stick him in a pocket realm? Unless he got stuck their himself.”

“We’ll find out when we get him back.”

“And how do we do that? We just reach in and pull them out?” It can’t be that easy.

“Not quite.”

Of course not.

“I know what will work,” Tobirama offers, “A mortal without the proper incantation can’t get out on their own, but if we connect the two of us, you can go in and retrieve them from the other side, and I can pull all of you back out again. Probably.”

“Probably?” Shisui repeats skeptically.

“Do you have any better ideas? I’d love to hear them,” he replies, in a way that clearly says he doubts Shisui has more then two good ideas a year.

“Fine. Tie a string to me and throw me in,” he sighs. Tobirama is one of the hottest people he’s met, but with an attitude like that he’s clearly an acquired taste.

Tobirama rolls his eyes and grabs Shisui’s wrist, a surge of foreign magic, clearly water based in nature, floods into his system. That’s a very intrusive string.

“Be careful. When you have a grip of them both send a pulse of energy through this and I’ll pull you out,” he explains, presenting a necklace that he yanked out of thin air and dropping it over Shisui’s head.

Shisui is lead forward by Tobirama, as they approach the tear things slowly distort. Colors bleed into one another, the air fluctuates as if distorted by a severe heatwave, and gravity grows lighter with each step, until suddenly he’s slipping.

He falls upwards, back smacking against a hard surface. Reality inverts as his spatial awareness readjusts. He stands up with a groan and looks around to find nothing but large white slabs of stone as far as the eye can see.

“Hello? Mom?” he calls out hesitantly. No echo returns, his voice swallowed up in the strange void.

He’s considering which way to look when his call is returned.

“Shisui?” his mother’s voice comes from behind him.

Gods, he thought he would never hear her again. He might cry. Later, maybe, when he isn’t in a pocket realm, and has more time to process it.

His mother, looking just as she had when her coworkers last saw her, appears from around the corner of one of the floating slabs. Following right behind her is his grandfather, looking as if he stepped out of the old photo on the family shrine.

“How did you end up here?” she asks, as she reaches out to press him into a crushing hug.

“It’s a fun story,” he hesitates, “I’ll tell you later and you can be mad at me for my poor safety practices then, but for now, let’s get out of here.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she promises, loosening her embrace.

Keeping hold of her with one arm, he offers his other hand to Kagami, who takes it with a strained grin. His gaze is locked to the necklace Tobirama gave Shisui. He pulses his magic through it, and Tobriama’s energy expands out from where it was embedded in him to engulf them.

Shisui falls up again. He would be happy to never do so again. They land in a heap with one pained groan. That’s going to hurt in the morning.

As he and his mother stand, Tobirama reaches past them to pull Kagami into a tight embrace. Shisui has a sudden realization that his mother is older than her own father now. Awkward.

“Fucking Danzo,” Kagami groans, gripping Tobirama back with equal enthusiasm.

Wait. Does he mean High Mage Shimura? Shisui has a sudden feeling that this very long day is about to become a very long week, or month, or maybe year.


End file.
